Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Raid On Illegals

...reads the headline up on Drudge right now. It's about freakin' time. My cynical side though thinks this is just a ploy to generate some "see we're doing our jobs" from ICE. Ultimately this is probably just fodder to grease the skids for an amnesty when the new Congress convenes. They didn't even bust the Swift Co(employer). Instead they busted the illegals for identity theft. In a situation like this you can take your pick from a law enforcement perspective...you know, in the country illegally, social security fraud, tresspassing, identity theft, etc. They must have just spun the unlucky "Illegal Alien Wheel of Misfortune" and or the famous "Illegal Immigration Magic 8 Ball". Here's the AP story

I also love the quote from one of the local illegal alien sympathizer Sheriffs...

"They've got three buses, a bunch of transport vans, a lot of cars and 150 or so agents," chief Cache County deputy David Bennett said.

Bennett said ICE officials didn't notify the sheriff's department about the raid. "They didn't ask for our help," he said. "We were lucky to find out."

At Grand Island, Police Chief Steve Lamken said he refused to let his officers take part in the raid.

"When this is all over, we're still here taking care of our community and if I have a significant part of my population that's fearful and won't call us then that's not good for our community," he said.

You are sworn to enforce all the laws Sheriff. If you won't do that then you need to be relieved of duty.

1 Comments:

Swift Co was using the Basic Pilot Project which is the optional 60 second phone call to the Social Security Administration to verify that the name and the social security number provided by the job applicants match. This is the best tool that the government provides to employers and an employer who uses it should get safe harbor from prosecution.

There is little doubt in my mind that Swift knew it was employing illegals but it had no tool to determine which members of its workforce were illegal. A couple of years ago Swift was fined $200,000 for a civil rights violation for violating the rights of immigrants by overly scrutinizing the documents of those applicants who appeared to be immigrants.

What is a company to do?

It is time for the Feds to update Social Security Cards from the silly blue and red scrap of paper that was introduced in the 1940s. Employers need a scannable ID card that gives them definitive confidence that they are hiring people who are authorized to work.